Would You Drink Water from Cow Poop?

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The California drought is bringing renewed attention to water shortages in some parts of the country and the growing need for more sources of clean water. While preservation of existing resources is critical, the scientific community these days has been coming up with surprising – and in some cases, disgusting – new ways to obtain clean water.

Here’s a head-spinning one: Scientists at Michigan State University are developing a system that actually takes cow manure and turns it into water clean enough for livestock to drink.

Known as the McLanahan Nutrient Separation System, the process also extracts nutrients from that water to serve as fertilizer. The system could be ready for commercialization by the end of the year.

“If you have 1,000 cows on your operation, they produce about 10 million gallons of manure a year,” Steve Safferman, an associate professor of biosystems and agricultural engineering who is involved in the project, told Michigan State University Today. “About 90 percent of that manure is water.”

Some people fervently believe that if the water is clean enough for livestock, then it’s also appropriate for humans.

“If you ask the average American whether they would drink water from cow manure, they’d say no,” Lynn Wilson, executive director at SeaTrust Institute and academic department chair for public administration at Kaplan University, said in an interview. “But clean water is clean water.”

She added that there’s a psychological challenge for Americans when it comes to getting used to the idea that they could be drinking water from cow manure. “We have to change the mindset of Americans,” she said. “We’re in a learning curve. They’ll say yes [to clean water from cow manure] when there’s no more water.”

Wichita Falls, a Texas town near Dallas that has been under exceptional drought conditions, has a big black pipe connecting the city’s wastewater facility to the water treatment plant. Residents who understand how bad the water shortage has become are supporting the project.

In California, a state that’s experienced pronounced drought in recent years, sewage is all the rage as well. Orange County Water District has one of the oldest and largest wastewater treatment facilities that can recycle sewage water into drinking water.